


Porcelain, Ivory, Steel

by newmrsdewinter



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Beauty and the Beast Elements, Body Horror, Cryptography, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Romance, F/M, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Graphic Violence, Haunted Houses, Language of Flowers, Slow Burn, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-08
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:42:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22166572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newmrsdewinter/pseuds/newmrsdewinter
Summary: A vicious, sinister beast lurks in the woods north of von Edmund territory. At the height of his madness, Dimitri ventures deep into its lair and becomes the willing captive of a house full of sinister enchantments.To Marianne, the House is a sanctuary. The place that the villagers shun and travelers never roam is the perfect haven to hide from her own demons. But a curse looms over her bloodline, and the House hides a perilous force that may threaten the war waging across Fodlan.Together, they confront what it means to be monstrous and try to break a curse along the way.[Dimitri/Marianne loose Beauty and the Beast AU. Takes place during and after the timeskip.]
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Marianne von Edmund
Comments: 36
Kudos: 114





	1. in which there is a body

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, yes, I know. Another Beauty & the Beast AU. This one will be different, I promise. There won’t be any roses, singing furniture, or absent-minded fathers in this one because I’m not drawing elements from the Disney movie. But there will be a beast in this story. Maybe two or three. And there will be beauty, but not much of it. 
> 
> I encourage you to mind the tags. The M rating isn’t there because it’s cute. Things get dark right off the bat.

_1182, Lone Moon. Wolfholt, von Edmund territory_

The sight of the dead had long ceased to stir Dimitri’s sympathies. His boots crunched in the snow as he hunkered down to inspect the hand jutting out like a claw that pointed to the woods. His gaze followed the hand all the way up to a decomposing arm, to a pair of shoulders, and then, finally, to the bulging, frozen eyes of a corpse whose final moments were surely spent in absolute terror. 

Dimitri had passed through this glade several times before the blizzard, but not once had he considered that the misshapen lump of snow in the center of the clearing might actually be the frozen corpse he was looking for. The thaw had thrown its outline into sharp relief in the morning light like a statue, gleaming like crystals in the snow. This man’s death was a tale that told itself as plainly as the light of day: something had pursued him, caught him, and devoured him. His arms were outstretched, his nails digging into the ground, hauling himself across the dirt to escape from what was dragging him in the opposite direction. Frostbite must have occurred not soon after, close to the time of death, when his injuries rendered him too incapacitated to move. 

He brushed off the snow concealing the corpse’s head, unflinching as he assessed the matted halo of hair surrounding the naked scalp. This man was a monk. He wore a monk's robes and a monk's tonsure. Judging by the sigils around his neck and the pockmarks scarring his face, he was also a crest scholar, one who resided in Faerghus during the plague, and one of the fortunate few who survived it. 

A trail of red along the jawline drew his attention away from the pockmarks. His eyes passed over the monk’s face towards a deep laceration that extended from the neck to the bottom of the sternum. The rest was hidden by snow that compacted the body to the soil.

Dimitri pulled the dead monk forward by the shoulders and yanked it free from its grip in the ice. Once he turned his trunk face-up, he hissed through his teeth. The eviscerated cavity depicted a much more vivid picture of the beast he was hunting than the scraps of information he gleaned from the nearby village. The beast’s jaw was wide and strong enough to seize the monk by its teeth and fling him across the clearing. The body was slashed open from chest to abdomen with two irregular, fanged canines. The heart and liver were conspicuously absent. Small animals had nibbled away the rest of the entrails that might have been hanging out. All that was left was a hollow, mangled cavity that was caked with ice. 

With the sun rising to its peak over the mountains, Dimitri almost departed without noticing the black glint of something clutched in the monk’s hand. He halted, squinted, then crouched to lift the arm by the wrist. Maybe this body was worth looting, after all. 

One by one, he snapped off the fingers encasing the object tightly to meat of the palm. Once released, he held it up to the light. He found to his astonishment that it was a talisman shaped to form a crest, one he had never seen before in his life. His upbringing made certain that he knew crests of the Saints, the Ten Elites, and the ones lost to time as intimately as he knew the make and shape of his own lance. This one, however, with the horns encircling the snout and the cross at the crown of its head, was a mystery altogether. 

An unknown crest. A ferocious beast. Three ravaged Imperial camps in von Edmund territory. The human remains that hadn’t been ripped away from bone were too negligible to warrant further investigation from Enbarr, and yet, they still deployed regiment after regiment into the area to replace the one before it, unaware they were feeding men straight into the beast’s gaping maw. The pieces took shape in Dimitri’s mind and they painted a picture that caused all the blood rush to his ears and _sing_. His entire face split into a wide, mad grin as he hefted himself up by his father’s lance. He sucked in a deep breath. The voices clamoring for attention during his investigation now flooded to the forefront of his mind like the crash of a tidal wave. 

_You know what I crave_ , Glenn crooned. _You know it, and I know you crave it too._

“I do,” Dimitri said aloud. His voice was hoarse from disuse. “We’re close, Glenn. Very close. I can almost smell the beast now.” 

_And you shall taste victory soon._

Dimitri tucked the talisman into his pocket. “Tasting will not be enough. I intend to rip it from limb to limb where it stands and bathe in its blood. Nothing could excite me more.” 

_Nothing?_ asked Father. _Have you forgotten your promise already? Her head for our silence. Her soul for our salvation._

The reminder hit Dimitri as suddenly as a stack of bricks. He whirled around, thoroughly chastened. “N-No, of course not —! No, father, _no_. I shall not forget again, I promise. I swear by the blood in my veins, I —” 

_We’ll have our tribute. See to it you will not forget soon._

“Yes, of course,” he murmured. “Of course.” 

With his task complete, there was little else to be done. From the body, Dimitri lifted half a vulnerary, an empty package of rations, and sodden map. The latter he used to scrape the gore off his gauntlets as it was useless, the ink having evaporated in the snow.

He glanced ahead of the clearing, towards the beaten path of undergrowth leading towards the heart of the woods. In the distance beyond a line of snow-capped firs, there lay a misty strip of no man’s land that the villagers never dared to enter.

Abandoning the body, Dimitri resumed his stride towards the path. Snow crunched once more under his boots. Upon reaching the thicket surrounding the firs, the snow slowly gave way to slush, mud, then soil, until finally, Dimitri found himself standing at the border of a lush forest that was untouched by winter’s frost.

“You like to hunt, don’t you, Glenn?” Dimitri asked idly. His fingers tapped a restless rhythm upon the pole of his lance.

_Not for beasts, brother mine. Only traitors with the blood of Duscur on their hands._

Wind blew through the ancient oaks clinging to their leaves, bringing the scent of sun-warmed earth. Dimitri considered Glenn’s reply, but the clamor in his mind dissipated once the red stone in the middle of his relic ignited and began to beat with a pulse of its own. Wispy red smoke curled off its bleached edges, and he swore he saw the claw twitch in anticipation.

_It hungers, Dimitri,_ said his father. _You would do well to answer its call._

Heaving his lance over his shoulder, Dimitri entered the wraithwood. With every step he took, the brambly thicket crept its thorns behind him to obscure the path and swallow him up into its gloom.


	2. in which there is a beast

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the large gap!

_1182, Pegasus Moon. Von Edmund territory, the Alliance. One month prior._

In mountain villages besieged by winter, hagstones hang from door frames to ward away the beasts and the wolves. Their eyes glow like guttering torch flames against the dark of the barren forests. Young children and woodsmen who sense these eyes glimmering in the thicket are wise to flee as though Nemesis were upon them — the Adrestian soldiers who are caught unawares allow fear to petrify their hearts to stone as the wolves close ranks, howling their victory to the moon.

There were rumors in furthest reaches of the Alliance about a cloaked assassin who beheaded patrolling Imperial generals in their sleep. A phantom who kept a gameboard of their supply routes, sowing discord between opportunistic merchants and the Adrestian regiments they supplied. Whispers spoke of black claws that skulked in the shadows, slumbering during the day and hunting by night. Peasants knew this phantom by his deeds, and soon his feats became legend. 

His manic, yellowed eyes were the last thing General Tobias saw before he died. 

Tobias’ feet lifted six inches off the dirt as Dimitri vaulted him up by the scruffs and slammed him against the palisade. His spine cracked against the timbers. When he opened his eyes, he elicited an ungodly shriek that was muffled by the hand clamped over his mouth: his face was almost nose-to-nose with the most terrifying fiend of a man he had ever beheld in his life. 

“It likely hasn’t escaped your attention that I am a maniac who hunts rats like you for sport,” Dimitri began. His grip upon Tobias’s neck tightened, noose-like, when he resisted, his legs kicking desperately against the palisade. “It irks me to grant Edelgard’s dog a merciful death when something else has already had the pleasure of killing your battalion.” 

Tobias shrieked, on the verge of fainting. His crimson cloak, once the symbol of his greatest pride, pooled into the snow like a dark stream of blood. He forced himself to meet Dimitri’s piercing gaze, but his resolve withered and died. His captor’s eyes were a wild, lightning blue, and his lips pulled back into a snarl that bared all his teeth like a slavering wolf. 

“It matters little to me whether you survive the night,” Dimitri continued. “Answer my questions to my satisfaction, and I’ll allow you the mercy of choosing how you die. Nod that you understand.” 

When he failed to respond, Dimitri pulled him from the palisade and dashed him back against the wood with enough force to shatter his ribs. “ _Nod!_ ” he snarled. 

The pain was excruciating. Tobias lost all sensation in his legs. Sobbing, he nodded as profusely as his current predicament allowed. 

“Speak out of turn, and I’ll break your neck,” Dimitri warned. “Lie, and I’ll tear the limbs off your body. You have one chance for salvation. Do you understand me?” 

Tobias nodded. The hands wrapped tightly around his neck left no room for negotiation. 

An eternity seemed to pass before Dimitri collected his thoughts. The waning moon rose to its peak over the cedars, casting its silvery light over the razed garrison like a bride’s veil. Tobias’ eyes prickled with tears. Two days before, he and his men had made camp here peacefully. Now, they were all dead and he was the only survivor left.

He almost had to strain to hear Dimitri’s voice over the wind when he said: “You and your battalion consisted of Adrestian spies who were tasked with infiltrating von Edmund territory.” He paused for a beat, then continued. “Who issued your orders and what was your mission?” 

“C-Count von Vestra,” Tobias said at once, and he didn’t know whose wrath he feared more. “He — he heard rumors about a demonic beast terrorizing the area. Our mission was to rendezvous with a crest scholar who’s been tracking it since the war started.” 

“What is this crest scholar’s name?” 

Tobias gulped. His mouth was bone dry. “T-The count didn’t tell us! All we knew was that the emperor had contacted him about some research he’d been doing in Wolfholt, where the beast was found. We — we were supposed to convey him back…back to Enbarr…” 

He hadn’t noticed the silence until the gauntleted claws around his neck clenched. The steel nails pierced the skin of his neck and constricted his airways until his vision grew dim. 

“Tell me more about the emperor wants from this man,” Dimitri said quietly.

“I don’t know, I don’t know!” he cried, wheezing. “I swear, I’ll answer anything you ask, but I don’t —” 

Dimitri drew a heavy sigh as Tobias blubbered his apologies. “What happened to this garrison last night?” 

Tobias’ lips went stark white. His shaking grew more violent. He didn’t know how it had happened, or how it had begun. All he remembered was the chill of absolute horror as he emerged from his tent and watched as each and every one of his men were devoured by the most monstrous beast he ever beheld in his life. The moment it had swung its massive head in his direction, he lost control of his bladder and fled to the woods as fast as his legs could carry him. 

Dimitri tilted his head, seeming to mistake his silence for impertinence. Slowly, his hands rose from Tobias’s neck to his face. His thumbs pressed a slight warning into his eyes. Tobias howled, wild and ear-splitting. His arms and legs flailed uselessly as blood dripped down his face. 

“You were doing very well before, but now my patience grows thin,” Dimitri growled. “I will not repeat myself.” 

Tears streamed uncontrollably down Tobias’ face. “It was the beast! It feasted upon my men like a starving bear! Plague take it, it must have stalked us from the kingsroad to the forest!” 

“Describe it to me.” 

“Fangs — massive body — a tusk — a howl like a banshee —” 

“That is an _exceedingly_ unhelpful description.” 

“There was a fog!” Tobias wailed. “I couldn’t see — none of us could see —Let me go, _please_ , let me go —” 

The pressure against Tobias’ eyes did not ease, but nor did it increase. Instead, Dimitri held his thumbs in the same position, unmoving. It was Tobias’ flailing and shouting made the agony worse. 

“So,” Dimitri said, changing tack. “While your men were being devoured by the beast, you saw fit to abandon your post and leave them to their fates.” 

The emperor had denounced the Goddess, but Tobias spent his final moments praying, begging for her mercy, begging for forgiveness. “I came back! I swear, I came back —” 

“You are a _coward_ —” His thumb split Tobias’ right cornea, and his shrieks reached a new pitch “— You are a treasonous _bastard_ —” His left eye received a similar treatment, and he crumpled to the ground, boneless, when Dimitri finally released him. “And you are a _filthy, pitiless rat_.” 

With a great roar, Dimitri picked him up like a rag doll and flung him against the palisade once more. His breath was hot against his neck when he said: “I ought to have ripped your head from your shoulders when I found you crawling through the mud. Your men as well, for their crimes against that peasant caravan from Aegir territory.”

Miraculously, even with the gore dripping down his face and the agony setting his nerves aflame, Tobias retained the wits to make sense of the unexpected accusation. 

“Th-They were only following orders! They —” 

“Ah,” Dimitri said softly. His voice dripped with thinly-veiled contempt. “ _Orders_. They had orders to butcher the women and children inside. Plunder their belongings. Spread their entrails over the road they crossed. They were under orders because if they defied them, they would lose their own heads as punishment. Do you deny this?” 

He was calm. His tone was reasonable — genial, almost. As though he were rebuking a small child. Tobias realized in his despair that this beast must have had heard this same old song before, from the others he must have slain for their insolence.

“And whose orders were they following?” Dimitri pressed, nonplussed. 

Tobias’ tears froze upon his cheeks. “Mine,” he said faintly. 

His skull shattered into pieces under Dimitri’s practiced hand. A strangled gurgle issued from his lips, but quickly fell short. As Dimitri wiped off the bone fragments and brain matter that splashed onto his armor, Tobias’s headless trunk slumped into the snow, smattering it as crimson as his fallen cloak. 

Dimitri sucked in a heavy breath and exhaled it noisily. He placed his hands on his hips and hung his head back to stare at the night sky. The moon, a waning gibbous that peeked coyly from the clouds, was much lower than he remembered. Wind shrieked through dead tree trunks as snow began to flurry in its wake. Dimitri thought he might be able to track the trampled path the beast had taken to the garrison, but a blizzard was imminent. Any trace of the beast would be long obscured by the snow once it was safe enough to return. 

So instead, he set to work looting all the bodies he could find. To his dismay, he found that the wolves had not been idle since the beast’s ambush. Almost nothing remained. The Adrestians carried little in the way of coin, and all their rations had grown rotten or frozen from the cold. 

But in one of the tents, pitched a fair distance away from all the rest, he found a small, stuffed rabbit among the wreckage: a child’s toy, stitched together by hand. It must have belonged to one of the dead peasant children. He picked it up and stroked its fur with his thumb. His heart twisted, and he tucked the rabbit into his cloak. 

Dimitri surveyed the ravaged garrison one last time before departing and found the silence much to his satisfaction. A torn Adrestian banner fluttered against the wind, flickering like dying embers in the dark.

* * *

The following evening found Dimitri hunched over a trencher of stew at the local tavern, feasting with the single-minded purpose of finishing his meal before the last bell for vespers could ring. If the chapel shut its doors early, he would have no choice but to take shelter in the stables during the blizzard. He had barely enough coin left for a bed, let alone a morning meal. As lowly as he had sunken, he was hardly willing to beg for a blanket from the innkeeper.

 _Even the boars have somewhere to sleep tonight,_ Glenn mocked. _Can’t even manage that much for yourself, can you?_

Glenn could sneer all he wanted, but he had never starved before in his life. Dimitri counted his blessings: he was warm, dry, and his belly was almost full. Months spent drifting in and out the slums taught him that achieving all three at the same time was a luxury to be savored. 

At the eve of the eleventh hour, the inn was packed with country-dwellers, mercenaries, and tradesmen, all seeking refuge from the blizzard threatening to bury the entire village in snow. And yet, despite the crowd, Dimitri sat alone in the alcove; the villagers had taken one look at his blood-soaked armor and cleared the table. He leaned back and sighed. The fire roared merrily in the hearth, providing light to the room that would have been swallowed up by the darkness outside.

But the mire of his thoughts bogged down any comfort he should have taken from the hearth. Questions still remained from his findings at the garrison — questions that badly needed answering. Tobias’s regiment was the third in recent months to fall to the beast’s clutches, and if Dimitri’s suspicions were correct, his wouldn’t be the last. The development concerning Edelgard and Hubert could not be ignored, either. What on earth could she need from a crest scholar in the Alliance that Hubert’s engineers couldn’t discover on their own? 

That she had sent him a personal entreaty disturbed Dimitri deeply. And on that note, how on earth had the beast known to target Tobias’ battalion? His mind still brimming with questions, he unfurled his map of the Alliance across under the table and searched for Wolfholt among the villages scattered across the Alliance.

Dimitri could not hide his grimace when he glanced up to find his contemplations disturbed by a toothless mercenary who slid onto the bench across from him. A barmaid followed close behind, banging a cracked earthenware jug of ale onto the table, and they immediately launched into loud conversation with each other. 

“Heard they arrested her. Tortured her, in all likelihood if that Vestra bastard had anything to do with it.” 

“Dunno what she did wrong, if all she did was put on a show,” the maid said mournfully. 

Dimitri scrolled up his map. He tore off a hunk of stale bread with his teeth and dipped it into his stew. He was their captive audience, and his mood soured with every passing minute. News of the outside world failed to interest him ever since Fhirdiad had fallen. Since then, nothing else seemed to matter. 

But then, the mercenary said: “She was _spying_ , you dolt. Sending whispers to the Gautiers and those Fraldarius dogs about those prisoners held in…” 

Dimitri stopped chewing. He strained his ears, but the rest of their conversation had been swallowed up by the din of the room. Standing abruptly, he tossed some coins onto the table. Blizzard or none, he refused to sit and listen to their drivel a moment more than necessary. 

The barmaid sprung up the moment he took his leave. “Anything else for you, milord?”

“Where can I find the village Wolfholt?” he asked instead. 

“Why?” 

“I hunt the beast who devours the Imperial rats.” 

To his absolute astonishment, she crossed herself, turned in a circle, and spat three times onto the ground. Afterwards, she replied cheekily, “It’ll cost you a pretty penny.” 

Dimitri wondered if she would still be contrite if she knew how he had disposed of General Tobias. He tossed a copper to her, and she pointed to a vague direction out the window. 

“It’s a fool’s errand,” she said unhelpfully. “The place is as cursed as they come. Mired in misfortune. Only witches, ghosts, and beasties live there.” 

Disgruntled, Dimitri stepped outside the warmth of the tavern and immediately drew his cloak around his body. A shimmer of icy wind blew down from the mountainside and chilled him to the bone. He realized the barmaid had been pointing to the village notice board when he spied a faded sheet of goatskin nailed to the wood. He tore it off the nail, and read the proclamation under the tavern torches. 

_To those without fear and a surfeit of coin:_

_As one with great concern for the villagers of Wolfholt, who suffer the presence of the Beast who wanders the wraithwood, I am pleased to reward three gold purses to the man who slays this insidious monster._

_Let it be known that any who claim this bounty without trophy forfeits the right to a fair and judicious trial and shall be hanged forthwith._

_Glory to the Alliance,_

_Margrave A.R.v.E_

Whoever this margrave was, he must have been generous, foolish, or desperate — or some puzzling combination of all three. However, considering that anyone had yet to fill the bounty, maybe it was all just a ploy to display his wealth. 

Dimitri skimmed through the proclamation one more time, scoffed loudly, then tucked the goatskin into his cloak. The bounty was dated during the Blue Sea moon, almost half a year prior. It was most likely expired. He wasn’t interested in the reward, as tempting as it sounded, but it augmented his need to unravel all of Wolfholt’s secrets. 

What in the Goddess’s name could Edelgard want from such a place? The more he heard about it, the more mythical it sounded. What manner of person resided in a village of witches, ghosts, and beasts? 

* * *

Dimitri spent the night in the decrepit chapel, huddled in a corner as the blizzard howled its fury against the walls outside. All around him, a sea of flickering candles surrounded a votive for the Goddess at the altar. The lights so burned brightly against his closed eyes that it was impossible to sleep a wink.

 _I know a way to make you forget your sorrows, brother,_ said Glenn, breaking the gloom. _I know a way to dull the pain._

His reply was punctuated by heavy, labored gasps. “Help me, Glenn. Please. Anything to make it go away.”

Glenn’s vision painted itself in broad brush strokes at the forefront of Dimitri’s mind like an illuminated manuscript. His heart rate gradually stilled to a slow drip. In a pool of darkness, he saw, so very clearly in his mind’s eye, Edelgard’s thin, lily-white neck. Both his hands wrapping around its diameter and squeezing. Her lips mottling from blue, to purple, to black — all in the span of seconds. Once he was certain she was dead, he cracked her skull open with his bare hands, and maybe then, after unraveling the gray matter of her mind, he would discover the reason why she decided to kill him piece by piece rather than ripping his heart outright.

_Do you see now, Dimitri? Do you know what you must do?_

“Yes,” he breathed. His thoughts slowly ebbed away to exhaustion. “I’ve forgotten myself. Please forgive me.” 

_Pay your forgiveness with her head_ , Stepmother demanded. _Then and only then will all be forgotten._

With a prolonged sigh, Dimitri eased into the flagstone as he tugged his cloak tighter to his body. Areadbhar was clutched tightly in both of his hands. He slept soundly, lulled by the whispers of the dead. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to ari, haley, and emma for beta reading this chapter and the next one!


	3. in which there is a House

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> again, sorry for the late update!

_1182, Lone Moon. The wraithwood, von Edmund territory._

Wolfholt was a hamlet situated in a valley where the eastern winds blew clean, pure air to the village from the mountains of Fodlan’s locket. But despite the rumors of myths and mysticism, Wolfholt was disappointingly ordinary. Like many other backwater villages of its kind, its people were proud, stoic farmers who enjoyed very little privileges in their short lives, and even fewer now that the Alliance was at war.

But Wolfholt’s wraithwood did not live up to its namesake. 

To Dimitri’s supreme disappointment, the wood was without the grim, sinister stillness that he had associated with the home of the beast. His mind had conjured up images of barren, frigid wastelands of mist, rock, and bone. Troll lairs filled with teeth, bones, and other human bits from the fairy tales his stepmother used to read him at night. 

Instead, he found a forest that was enchanted to be eternally autumn. For the first time in months, he felt the sun warming his face through the light filtering from the beeches; the meadows were so rich with wild strawberries that when he lifted his boots from the soil, they dripped red like blood. Slender, white-barked birches swayed with the breeze, their foliage shimmering like gold coins against the sun. 

No, the wraithwood did not live up to its sinister reputation, and for that reason, its beauty chilled Dimitri even more than crest scholar’s mangled corpse ever could. It felt like an omen. 

_Where are the ghosts? Where is the beast?_ Father demanded. _I fear your hunter’s instincts have led you astray._

Dimitri ignored him, pressing forward along the trail. Humans did not touch this part of the forest, and yet he saw traces of them everywhere: relics of battles long-fought scattered the undergrowth as commonly as acorns: crumbling wagons, ancient catapults, copper vats that must have been filled with hot oil. He yanked fletchings out of tree trunks and recognized bird feathers native to the Empire, Alliance, and even Almyra. 

But there were no bones. Never bones. Dimitri had seen fossilized wyvern remains in Zanado that must have dated hundreds or even thousands of years, and yet nothing of the sort remained in the forest, not from the even from its own animals — if there were any present, that is. He had yet to see a deer or even a single chipmunk scamper through the pines. 

The first omen came when he wandered into a sun-drenched copse around midday. He might have missed it entirely if the wind hadn’t guided him in its direction — when he saw that the first set of armor lying face-down in the grass was followed by another, and then another, his stomach twisted once he realized that this wasn’t a copse at all, but a mass grave. 

Empty husks of armor piled upon each other in droves, all foreign in their sets, filling the copse like hollow beetle carapaces. Vambraces still attached to their gauntlets jutted out of the grass, the fingers clutching weapons belonging to a different century. No blood. No corpses. No bones. The trees, their roots, the leaf-trodden path — all seemed to feed upon every particle of detritus that lay upon the soil no matter how recently it must have died. 

_Consider this a warning_ , Father rumbled. _Leave now or face your doom._

Setting Areadbhar and his other weapons aside, he sat under the shade of a rotting, wooden trebuchet and shook the last water droplets from his waterskin into his mouth. It was easy to be lulled into a sense of safety and complacency with the sun’s rays beating down his back, but he kept a hand on Areadbhar at all times. 

_Where is the beast, Dimitri?_ Glenn asked. _Where is the blood?_

“Soon, Glenn,” he said hoarsely. “Soon.” 

He followed the trail like a path of breadcrumbs. At the end, he was certain he would find the beast’s lair.

* * *

Dimitri found a decrepit manor house before the lair, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that the two were one and the same. When the sun dipped below the horizon, an unnatural chill had fallen over the wraithwood. After hours of aimless wandering, hunger and weariness dragged his feet towards the sturdy, wrought-iron gate. The house loomed before him, all ominous spires and parapets and turrets. He leaned his weight against the bars and pushed; after much creaking and scraping, the gate yielded and permitted him entry into the courtyard. 

His chattering teeth were so loud that it made him doubly aware that he was the only source of noise for miles around. The silence of the Wolfholt, the clearing, and the wraithwood…the only voices he heard were the ones in his head, and now his nerves were so frayed he had barely the strength to trek across the courtyard.

He pulled his cloak closer as he trudged towards the front door. From out of his pocket, he drew the crest scholar’s talisman and held it next to the brass knocker. The two were identical copies. In the ring set from the knocker’s snout, lily tendrils and their bells wrapped and curled around the brass like a chokehold. 

_This house is diseased,_ Father warned. _This house is cursed. Leave now and never come back. Make for Enbarr before this house consumes your soul._

Dimitri reached out to lift the tarnished ring. He immediately skidded back when the door swung open by itself. A lightless foyer loomed before him, inviting him in. His heart thudded like a hammer against the anvil of his chest. Darkness all around. No light to be seen. He nocked an arrow to his bow. His entire body was held taut as he crossed the threshold. He swore he would shoot the first thing that moved. 

_LEAVE NOW._

A single, filigreed lamp flickered on. Little by little, the house revealed itself to him as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. First came the twin spiral staircases that flanked the entrance hall, leading to wings and corridors paneled by intricately-carved mahogany. The hall in which he stood was carpeted with rugs so plush that they muffled every step he took, the air so dense with mildew that walking felt like treading through sludge.

_DON’T COME BACK._

Every piece of furniture he encountered was shrouded in white. Their outlines formed shapes in the dark, some as tall as men, and others indiscernible still. The beast could be hiding anywhere. If all the sheets suddenly lifted and flew at him in a barrage, he wouldn’t know where to shoot first. 

_IT’S COMING._

Sharp claws skittered underfoot and it hurtled past in a flash. His arrow flew before he knew he pulled the string. Something shattered, echoing through the hall, and it crunched beneath his boots when he skidded back. His heart hammered in his ears. He shifted, peered up, then swore loudly when he saw the fractured remains of a gilt mirror hanging from the wall. It was the only piece of furniture left uncovered by a dust sheet. 

_Very nicely done_ , said Glenn, snickering. 

Scowling deeply, Dimitri ignored him and took out another arrow. But as he held it to his bow, he was paralyzed by a sudden disquieting thought. If he thought he saw something in the mirror’s reflection, then whatever it was must have been behind him…

Dropping both arrow and bow, he pulled out Areadbhar and drove it into the invisible assailant. His eyes were screwed shut the entire time. When he opened them, a dust sheet had flown to the ground, revealing Areadbhar’s haft buried inside of a splintered grandfather clock. 

He felt like an idiot.

 _This house has already clouded your judgment_ , Stepmother mourned _. Listen to your father, Dimitri. Leave, leave, please leave…_

“Edelgard was willing to brave Claude’s wrath by planting her spies this far into the Alliance,” Dimitri reminded the dead, but his face still burned with embarrassment. “I am determined to find out why, or die trying in the process.”

Scented oil lamps lined the west corridor. He took a step forward, and the lamp before him flickered on — but the one he passed winked out. His vision was blind to the space a handspans ahead or behind him. Eventually, the lamps led him to a door that opened into a vast dining room that looked downright welcoming.

Two handsome, high-backed chairs were set at opposite ends of the dining table. Dimitri positioned himself behind the one closest to the hearth. His mouth salivated, but his mind resisted. A simple, rustic meal was set before him: steaming broth in a porcelain tureen, rounds of oat bread, and a board of cheese. The gnawing in his stomach only grew fiercer. He hadn’t eaten anything in two days. Anxiety and anticipation chipped away the hunger pains, but now they weighed him down with the force that almost brought him to his knees. 

_It’s a trap. It’s fairy food. I’ll be imprisoned here forever if I take a single bite._

He jolted backwards, alarmed, when the chair suddenly pulled itself out and tilted towards him in a deferential bow. He stared at it dumbly. It was _inviting_ him to sit down. He did not. A seat like that, with its rigid arms and high back, would trap him in place if the beast came creeping behind him. 

“No,” he told the chair sternly, but pulled himself up sharply. The first time he spoke to anything in this godforsaken house, it was to a chair, and he actually anticipated a response. “No,” he repeated, “if I eat, I will eat while standing up.” 

_This is madness_ , he thought as the chair gave a little “suit yourself” motion and tucked itself precisely back into place. _This is insanity,_ he thought, as his place setting shifted to the far left of the table where he stood. A crystal decanter levitated off the tablecloth and streamed wine into a goblet as a ladle followed suit with the broth in his bowl. _I must be dreaming._

The wise thing to do would be to wait for the other seat across the table to be filled. There was an identical place setting there too, save for the goblet at Dimitri’s end of the table. That was replaced by a small tea service. The last lord of the manor was clearly dead, but the house was expecting one more guest for dinner and it knew their preferences. Was it the beast? Or, he thought, with a prickle of alarm, another bounty hunter that the house had taken as a tenant. He placed Areadbhar carefully on the tablecloth, with the blade pointing towards the empty seat on the other end. 

In the end, his stomach won. He ignored the raging protests of Glenn and his father and lifted the bowl, drinking the broth from its rim. His eyes watered. Of course, he couldn’t taste any of it, but now he understood the tales about the wandering travelers who gave up their newborns for a bowl of broth. Greedily, he slurped down the rest and drank the second helping that the house ladled for him. He tore into the bread and cheese like a hound starved before a hunt. All the while, he stole glances between the chair, the door, and the food, waiting for something to happen.

Nothing did.

Struck by morbid curiosity, Dimitri set his bread down and picked up Areadbhar. He gave the chair a poke in the back, and swallowed a yelp when it gave a pained little creak. _What was that for?_ it seemed to ask, inclining its seat toward him. 

“This house is not haunted,” he declared loudly, though mostly to reassure himself. Marshal his nerves. Recompose himself. “Merely alive. Friendly.” He glanced at the chair. “Obsequious, even.” 

When the last drop of broth was gone, the last crumb of bread brushed off the table, the clock struck midnight, and still, nothing happened. The fated dinner guest never arrived. Perhaps the house was only paying homage to its missing lord. Now Dimitri was certain that if he heard ghostly wailing or claws scraping against the walls in the small hours of the morning, then it would just be his own imagination running wild and nothing more. 

Yawning, he spread his cloak like a bedroll and curled in front of the hearth. He fell asleep with Areadbhar clutched in both of his hands and dreamed about ghosts.

* * *

Dimitri felt as though he had scarcely closed his eyes to sleep before he awoke with something thick that wrapped around his body, binding his arms together. With a cry, he bolted up in a blind panic, thrashing and tearing it off before it could suffocate him completely. 

_Fool!_ he raged internally. _You let your guard down! Now the house has seized you and —_

The bindings tore in Dimitri’s hands, but the cloth was flimsier than cambric. All at once, soft, downy feathers burst in a cloud from the inside. He blinked owlishly, then he scanned his surroundings. The feathers floated to the ground like snowflakes. Someone had lain a quilt embroidered with delicate lilies over him after he had fallen asleep. He had thrashed so much that it had wrapped around his waist several times.

The dining room was just as empty as it had been the night before. His mysterious benefactor was nowhere to be found. After much wriggling, he extricated himself from the quilt and immediately shivered. The fire had gone out. He was sitting atop a pile of plush fur hearth rugs that hadn’t been there the night before. 

He reached for his cloak, folded neatly upon a settee, and to his absolute astonishment, found it restored to its former glory. The fabric pooled like a river of starlight in his hands. All the ticks and fleas living in the mantle had vacated, and the faded griffin upon the cloak was re-sewn with real silver threads that shimmered splendidly in the light. Now the griffon gazed back at him proudly, imperiously, like a mockery of his former self.

Perturbed, he dressed quickly and ate breakfast just as fast. The cloak was left on the settee, too grand to wear inside of the house without occasion. Today was for hunting the beast. Today, he vowed it would die.

* * *

If Dimitri had expected the house to be perfectly willing to divulge all of its secrets to him in the span of a single afternoon, then he was sorely mistaken. Exploration along the east wing of the second floor revealed that all the doors were locked. If they were open, the rooms were empty, not even a single moth carcass to be shaken from the curtains. Even the books he had tried taking off the shelves in the drawing room were charmed to stick together like glue. No portraits of the disgraced family. Not even a single memento to be found to prove that they even existed. 

Tired and frustrated, he plopped himself against an alcove flanked by dire wolf statues, where raindrops pattered against a wide window. It was the only source of light that illuminated the entire corridor.

“Cursed, diseased, and vile,” he muttered mutinously, echoing his father’s words. “More like empty, neglected, and abandoned.” 

_The statues_ , Stepmother whispered, surfacing for the first time that day. _Look at their faces._

Dimitri glanced up. It was only then that he noticed that the wolves stood on their hind legs, snarling at an invisible assailant. Their distorted eyes were locked with the window at the end of the corridor. Tightening his grip upon his lance, he stood and approached it silently. The window was actually a glass door that opened into a balcony. Unlocking the hatch, he stepped outside, where he was welcomed by a wet gust of breeze. Below him lay a vast garden that was dominated by a palatial conservatory, gleaming like a jewel under the sun. 

He moved towards it as though spellbound. He realized almost a little too late that if he took one more step forward, it would be off the balcony and four dizzying stories below to his death. His leg was already poised to hoist himself off the handrail. 

“What’s inside...?” he asked breathlessly, but he already knew the answer. 

His stepmother went silent, and the hairs on his neck stood on end when he realized that it wasn't her voice that spoke to him. 

* * *

One species of flower and only one grew in the conservatory. Lilies of all kinds grew in unorganized plots overflowing with runners and tangles of climbers, curling their stems around weeping willows and their ferns. Their blossoms invaded the trellises leaning against the walls, the branches of the trees, and perfumed the conservatory with a scent so cloying it was almost nauseating. With every step he took, he kicked up drifts of petals as white as snow.

Diamond-cut panels suffused the entire conservatory in a wash of silvery light. Dimitri’s boots clomped in overlapping echoes against the spotless marble tile. How very quiet the conservatory was in its vastness; how very guilty he felt for disturbing its peace. If there had been organ music playing, he would not have questioned it; he would have welcomed it, even. He craved another source of noise to offset the sin of his intrusion. 

He eventually crossed the other side and his feet came to the edge of a reflecting pool that was level with the ground. Lily pads floated upon its surface, propelled by a breeze that he could not feel. 

All was silent. But not all was still. 

He stood motionless, mesmerized by a towering Goddess statue whose plinth was situated at the center of the reflecting pool. Its eyes wept lily of the valley blossoms down its cheeks and the curve of its neck. The stems were long, impossibly and unnaturally long, curling and wrapping around the Goddess who wore the bells like a beaded shawl around her shoulders. 

He drew a heavy breath, then stepped onto the first marble stepping stone that led to the Goddess on her plinth. Upon reaching her in the center, she smiled down at him, kind and benevolent with her stone arms outstretched to greet him. 

A memory resurfaced, unbidden and unexpected. In his mind’s eye, he saw his stepmother sitting at the window seat inside of her solar, embroidering snowdrops onto a handkerchief for his father. He looked to her voice for guidance, but found none; in fact, all the voices had been uncharacteristically quiet ever since he entered the conservatory. 

He reached out his hand and picked a white blossom off the statue’s girdle. 

Distant rumbling sounded from afar. He froze, the flower still in hand. Sweat beaded down his forehead as his eyes darted about his surroundings. _Get off the pond. Get off. Get off now._ He started off at a brisk pace then broke into a sprint when the ground beneath him trembled. The trees shook. Glass panes fell one by one from the ceiling and smashed onto the marble as wind lashed his face and dust stung his eyes. Dimitri barely made it halfway across the length of the house before quaking grew too great for him to continue. 

“Come on!” he shouted. Areadbhar came to life in his hands, pulsing in tune to the rapid beat of his heart. “Show yourself now, or I’ll —” 

A ghastly howl shook the entire building, raising all the hairs on his arm. Neither dragon, nor basilisk, nor griffin burst through the walls, but a demonic beast more monstrous and more terrible than he had ever imagined. 

Dimly, in the back of his mind, a traitor’s voice echoed his final words.

_“Fangs — massive body — a tusk — a howl like a banshee —”_

His body went numb with terror when he charged towards the beast at full tilt. It evaded him easily, pivoting and swinging its foreclaw with a nonchalance that sent him hurtling across the conservatory. The force knocked all the wind from his chest when he collided hard with a tree. Areadbhar flew out of his hands and into the pool. He crumpled to the ground, groaning, his ears ringing as black spots danced in his vision. 

The moment he opened his eyes, his face was nose-to-nose with the beast’s snout, and its muddy, hazel eyes bore into his own as its lips pulled back into a snarl. 

“You may kill me,” it growled, “exploit my hospitality, burn my home to the ground — but _leave my flowers alone.”_

Dimitri wheezed; one clawed toe pressed so soundly against his windpipe that he was incapable of uttering a single word. Its weight would crush him in an instant. 

“Speak! Have you nothing to say in your own defense?” 

The agony in his spine scattered all rational thought. His own monstrous strength failed him as he failed to pry the claw off his chest with both hands, but to no avail. The pressure increased only incrementally, but its claw pierced through his armor and into his skin.

“It is your greatest misfortune to fall at the hands of a creature as cursed as I am,” the beast rumbled. “Last words are a luxury I’ll allow you before I punish you for the burden of your crimes.” 

The crushing inevitability of death shook the cobwebs loose in his mind. The contempt in its voice had thrown him off, but the pain did not. Only one person he knew talked like that, and suddenly all the pieces clicked into place. 

Dimitri astonished himself by rasping, “I _know_ you. I know your voice.”

“You — know — _nothing!”_ the beast spat, but Dimitri knew that he had thrown it off-balance.

Before its jaws snapped upon his face, three thunderous cracks shook the walls of the conservatory. Glaring beams of light suffused the entire space. Dimitri gasped the moment all the weight lifted off his chest. He panted for breath, heaved sideways, and gulped several great lungfuls of air as all the blood rushed back to his head. 

The beast had vanished. In its place was a young woman who lay slumped across his chest. Her hand was wrapped around his neck and her open mouth panted heavily against his shoulder. 

Her face was the last thing he saw as his world turned black. 

“Oh, no,” she whispered over him, shaking her head. “Oh, no, no, no, no!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wonder who that could be :)

**Author's Note:**

> Now, I have to give credit where credit is due. This story is heavily inspired by T. Kingfisher’s _Bryony and Roses_ — a work that took its own inspiration from Robin McKinley’s _Rose Daughter_. It wouldn’t be inaccurate to say that this isn’t a B&B AU so much as it is a _Bryony and Roses_ and _Rose Daughter_ AU, but those elements won’t come into play until much later. If you’ve read both books, you’ll know it when you see it. 
> 
> Final shout-out to the discord for putting up with my nano wailing, complaining, and whining!


End file.
